In the modern networked world of the Internet and World Wide Web, users are accustomed to changing browser views by clicking on ‘jump’ objects (hyperlinks). Often these jumps result in a view on a new object orthogonal to the original object (un-related in a contextual manner). For instance, the user might be perusing some business e-commerce web site that happens to list links to ‘related sites’. The user might click on one and be taken to a storefront for a totally different company.
Sometimes, however, a hyperlink takes the user to another place in the same superset object. For instance, the user might be reading a chapter in an online book. The link might be to another section of the book, however, the user has no way of knowing whether the link will take him BACK or FORWARD in the book.
One of the great capabilities of information in a networked world is the ability of a user to easily jump amongst spots in a view of an object, without the need to traverse in a more linear fashion through the object. However, in the case of an online book, sometimes the user would like to know before making the ‘leap’ (following the link), which direction he will be going in a linear view of the book. The user might not want to follow the link if it would take him forward, since he might be reading the book “the old-fashioned” way (front to back). However, if the link takes him backward, he might want to follow it, to re-enforce some concept he has already seen but perhaps not sufficiently remembered.